Sunday, May 1, 2011
Season 5 Evaluation
Though it doesn't show in the average score, this season felt a bit rockier than the last. Maybe it was that the 1/5s were the first ones to give a real challenge to the season two dominance of the bottom five, and that the 5/5s never quite reached the heights that Living Witness soared to. I mean, Latent Image, my favorite of the season, it was good, well-acted, but out of place in the series. We lost the Hirogen, and while I'm not a big fan of the Hirogen, they were better than the Malons. To even that out though, Janeway has hardly spoken to Seven this season, which is a huge bonus.
Season five also marks the introduction of the Delta Flyer, Voyager's new sleeker version of a runabout. In the Extreme Risk review I contrasted its introduction with that of the stealth ship/blackbird in Battlestar; suffice it to say that its arrival could have been so much more emotionally relevant. That said, it is a handy craft to have around, especially considering how much more often Voyager tends to have shuttle missions in its stories.
I get the feeling from this season like the writers are content with the rhythm that they hit in season four. Well, okay, that was a decent season, and, by extension, so is this one. They seemed to have latched on to the Doctor and Seven as the ones to follow, which isn't a bad thing since they are engaging characters, but I do miss some of the other characters, and a more well-rounded crew could lead to a better overall show.
Watchability: 4/5
Bottom Line: Another decent season, a little rockier than the last but still good. I just feel like there wasn't an effort to aspire for more.
Character Status:
9. Kathryn Janeway - No surprise here. She did have a reasonably decent episode in Counterpoint, but probably the best development for her is that, five seasons into the show, she has finally been able to admit she's wrong (Latent Image). And she kind of almost did it again a second time. On the whole, she's less intolerable this season, but there's already such a large gap between her and the next character that she's got a long road ahead of her just to get to eighth place.
8. Chakotay - The only change with Chakotay's character is that he got added to the "alzheimer's fear club" in The Fight. Other than that, nothing. Chakotay sits here for another season.
7. Tuvok - My, how the mighty have fallen. In Bride of Chaotica! (Not a Tuvok episode), I complained about the lack of him, even in the background, recently, and then found out that he's been pursuing his music career. Well, whatever excuse he has, he was very absent this season, and one of his appearances was awful (Gravity). At several points throughout the season, I pointed out episodes that would have been good Tuvok episodes; just for a little exercise in wishful thinking. You can do it, Tuvok, come back.
6. Tom Paris - The writers finally found a way to give Tom some development without saying anything specific about his past in Thirty Days, so that's cool. However, other than having one fewer rank pips, and sometimes being referred to as 'ensign', you wouldn't know that he defied Janeway and attempted to commit a terrorist act earlier in the season! I mean seriously, they don't have to dedicate a whole episode to it, but from time to time his soured relationship with Janeway could be mentioned, or the fact that he is no longer his best friend's superior officer, or even that Torres likes him even though others look at him strangely (but they don't). I don't need any big continuity here, but a little follow-up would have been nice.
5. B'Elanna Torres - B'Elanna seems to have backpedaled this season somewhat, as she's been acting more emotionally stunted than she was in the first season. I suppose the writers may have felt that they advanced her too quickly, but I'm more disposed to thinking that they just wanted someone to be angry. Either way, the death of the Maquis is a reasonable excuse for making her angry, so that works for me.
4. Harry Kim - It's a bit of an insult to Harry to make it to the #4 spot because I'm feeling so "meh" about the other characters, but while he had the awful The Disease to his name, his exuberant personality is so necessary in this crew that I'm rarely disappointed to see him show up. I mentioned that the Tom and Harry friendship was resurfacing in the last season recap, and it is, but the bits are so infrequent that I had no idea that I'd written that last time and was just going to say that again. This season's similarity to the last season is really coming out in the fact that most of these character reviews could essentially say: see last season.
3. Neelix - Well, I'm not surprised to see him here anymore, but he's not here for any new reasons. He is still one of the more mature, responsible members of the crew. He had no awesome episodes to himself this time around, but that's okay.
2. Seven of Nine - And the reason that he had no episodes to himself is that Seven and the Doctor have been hogging them all. Seven's here largely because we spent so much time on her, and with that large a number of episodes, some of them had to be great. She's a good actress, and works very well against a lot of characters, including Naomi. I know that I've largely ignored the Seven Naomi scenes in my reviews, since they are often irrelevant to the main plot, but that doesn't mean I haven't appreciated the slow growth of this friendship. Also, I didn't mention it in the Relativity review, but it was good to see her in a Starfleet uniform.
1. The Doctor - He's once again the star in the best episode of the season, Latent Image (and, well, one of the worst two, Someone to Watch Over Me). But he has monopolized screen time, along with Seven, so it's easy to overlook one bad egg in a nest filled with gems.
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